


The 5 Times She Falls in Love

by moonmayhem



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, F/M, Five Times, I really hope you all enjoy this pls, Love, M/M, Multi, Sexy Times, Therapy, WWE - Freeform, WWE!AU, Wrestling, pls comment lololol, so many people fall in love, teenage sexual manipulation, they aren't wrestlers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 08:50:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmayhem/pseuds/moonmayhem
Summary: AU!Prompt : Every time you fall in love, you earn a red tally on your wrist. When you meet your true love, it turns black
Relationships: Brief Roman Reigns/Jon Moxley, OFC/Corey Graves, OFC/Roman Reigns, OFC/Sonya Deville, OFC/Trent Seven, Seth Rollins/OMC, Sorta OFC/Seth Rollins
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	The 5 Times She Falls in Love

**Author's Note:**

> \- OFC does not have a name, she is only referred to in the fic with she/her pronouns [and a nickname later on], this fic is written in third person pov.
> 
> \- The underage sex is consensual and is NOT written in any detail whatsoever, it is merely implied.

There are four red tally marks on her arm.

The first is from high school, sixteen years old, doe-eyed, and not nearly as well-versed in the world as she likes to think. This love was quick and almost not worth mentioning if it hadn’t been for the reminder left on her arm.

Corey is a year above her with eyes that sparkle like the sea at sunset and a smile that could break hearts.

In the backseat of his dad’s SUV, he tells her with lips spit slick that he loves her. Loves her so much that he wants her to be his first and for him to be hers. To prove his feelings he shows her his brilliantly red tally that lays across his forearm like a brand new tattoo.

With a toothy grin and happy tears burning at the corners of her eyes, she feels the ticklish heat of her own mark rising onto her skin and shows him proudly.

When Corey drags his hand up her thigh and under her skirt, she tells him that she loves him too.

“I know,” he grins, breath heavy against her neck.

A week after that she finds him leaning against someone else’s car with those same hands dipped into the denim band of another girl’s pants.

“I just wanted to try you on,” he says with that all too familiar grin.

Those eyes don’t shine as brightly as she had once thought.

With her voice small, she asks, “What about your tally?”

“I’ve already got a girlfriend. I don’t love _you_.”

It’s abrupt and humiliating. First love crumbles faster than it was even able to begin.

Months later, his girlfriend is revealed to be one of the first-year math teachers. Rumors were spread, parents were informed, and charges were made.

She knows that she was definitely not Corey’s first.

–

The next time catches her by surprise.

Every Friday after school she goes along with her friends to a cafe that was only five minutes away from her house.

It’s the barista. He is much too old for her - he looks like he’s in his early 30’s, but she can’t help the way that she blushes and stumbles over her order each and every time she sees him. At one point, he is so used to seeing the gaggle of high schoolers that he knows each drink order by heart.

“Chocolate chip frappuccino with extra whipped cream, right?” He already has the cup in his hand and she swears that angels sing.

“Perfect.” She smiles much too wide and it looks odd on her face, but he _also_ knows her name because there it is, right there in black permanent marker all big and bold, she could die happy.

His name is Seth, but she knew that the first time she had walked in. _Name tags. _

It is all very innocent. A schoolgirl crush that is nothing but a customer and employee relationship to the man behind the counter.

When she gets her own job, her cousin gifts her his old SUV so that she doesn’t have to borrow her parent’s car. This means she can go to the cafe whenever the hell she pleases - on weekends, of course.

Cafe Friday’s are still a tradition for her friend group, but Saturday afternoons have become her own personal time away to sip on her frappuccino and read.

One Saturday, Seth is on break, the cafe is jam-packed and there is nowhere to sit. So, with sugar vibrating throughout her body she offers him the empty seat at her table. He recognizes her, so after a grateful _“thank you so much,”_ he sits. It shocks her.

It’s quiet at first. She tries to busy herself with the book once more, but all she ends up doing is rereading the same sentence over and over again. It starts to get annoying.

She peers up at him through her eyelashes and sees that he’s rolled up the pitch-black long sleeve shirt to his elbows. The marks are there, bright and beautiful and close enough for her to stare. She counts; one, two, three, four, five–

It is not until she gets to the eighth and last one that she realizes she has been counting out loud, and he is grinning at her knowingly, but her entire fucking face turns three shades of red and out comes a regurgitation of apologies.

“Oh, my god. I’m so, so sorry! That’s rude of me, I didn’t mean-”

Seth waves his hands up in the air and stops the ramblings. “Please, don’t apologize! I swear it’s alright.”

There is no offense in his eyes and although she is still incredibly mortified, curiosity takes hold of her attention.

With a twinkle in his eye, he begins to tell the summarized tales of each and every love story that is on his arm and tells her that when he is done that she had better do the same.

She is all too aware of the inadequacy of her single-story after he finishes.

“My boyfriend only has two on his arm - one from college and one for me.”

The use of the word ‘boyfriend’ makes her blink owlishly at him for a second, but she quickly recovers. “Only two?” She looks down at her own arm and clicks her tongue, “Are we doing something wrong?”

He gives a loud and quick laugh. “_We_? You only have one!”

“I’m in high school! Am I loving too early, should I disappear into hiding and save my feelings for when I’m older?”

Her dramatics are received well because his laughter doesn’t stop, and when he laughs with his head thrown back she is in heaven.

“Falling in love,” he sighs as if he was remembering each and every feeling he has ever encountered with love. “It’s magical.”

Seth lays his arm out on the table, allowing her to touch if she’d like, so with gentle touches he lets her fingertips glide over each of them until he gets goosebumps.

“You don’t regret these?”

“Nah.”

“Even the painful ones?”

“Especially those.”

With hands in her lap, she hangs her head to look at her lonesome tally. For the last year and a half, she hated seeing it, hated the way it screamed at her like a glaring reminder of how gullible she had been. How in love she had been with a boy who only saw her as a cocksleeve.

“Hey,” he says gently, getting her to look up at him. “You’re young. Love will find its way to you. Don’t get hung up on finding the Big One, ok? Statistically, only 43% of people ever find their black tally mark.”

“Love’s annoying.”

He hums his agreement, “But it’s magical.”

_He_ was magical, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

–

Months that seemed to add up to more than a year had passed, and graduation peaked its head around life’s corner. By this time she had upped the coffee game from a frappuccino to a whole ass cafe mocha.

Seth makes a really big deal about it when she tells him. “Look at the grown-up with her grown-up coffee drink! Your taste buds are finally hitting adult puberty, what a milestone to be a part of.”

After having a big ole laugh at her expense, he soothes over the embarrassment by handing her a gift along with her fancy new coffee drink.

“Don’t open it until you get home,” he says. “It’s just a little something for when you go to college and have new adventures.”

The waggle of his eyebrows has her rolling her eyes but she thanks him all the same - much too embarrassed to truly tell him how much the gift meant to her.

She nearly bursts into tears when she gets home and opens his gift. There were eight journals, all different in size and design, that had a personalized note inside each cover.

A bit of cardstock falls out of one of them and when she slips it between her fingers and reads the all too familiar handwriting in black permanent marker she holds her breath.

_For all of your magical love adventures! – Seth._

The itching on her forearm is not something she expects, but it is not unfamiliar.

–

The next time she goes to see Seth she has already graduated and needs a to-go cafe mocha before she starts packing up her room for college.

When he hugs her over the counter to congratulate her before taking her order, he notices the freshly red tally mark on her forearm. The look on his face is one of elation, and for a brief moment, she wonders why, but any good person would want another to fall in love - especially Seth.

_It’s magical. _His voice echoed in her ears.

“You’ve fallen in love again? How beautiful. Who’s the lucky person?”

Her smile is small and her eyes a little misty, “No one,” she responds as he takes the money, “This one won’t end well either.”

For a beat, he looks upset but recovers with a smile. “Long-distance is never easy, I’m sure everything will get better once you start college. New place, new people.”

It is obvious that Seth is trying to soothe the ache he knows she feels in the very pit of her stomach, but it only makes it worse.

When he hands her the coffee he reaches out with a watery smile and says, “I’m gonna miss you, kiddo.”

Her throat constricts - strangling the words in a vice grip that asks them not to leave. “I’ll miss you too.”

After that, college becomes a much-needed escape, but she makes a promise that she won’t stop seeing him.

–

The next time she sees Seth he has his head down making someone’s coffee, so another person stands at the register. They are new and look like they do not want to be there - it’s late, they are a half-hour away from closing and she feels bad, but it has been a whole-ass school year and she feels brand new with stories to share.

“A cafe mocha, please,” she asks, “and a hug from the one making the coffee.”

The employee looks at her oddly, probably thinking that she’s a stalker, but her request is enough for them to say something once Seth hands off the last order.

“Uh, Seth?” He turns to them, deep brown eyes looking tired and his beard much fuller. A year older oddly looks like four on him. “The customer said she–”

And before his coworker can get out another word, Seth lets out a loud noise that sounds like her name and he quite literally launches himself around the counter to wrap her up into a tight hug.

“Ok,” the other employee mumbles, “I’ll just put this order on Rollins’ tab for tonight.”

Seth holds her out in front of him when he’s squeezed her to him enough and scans over her eagerly, taking in all of the small changes that he may have missed. He sees it then, just like he saw the second one, a third red tally cuddles next to the others.

His eyes light up, “Tell me all about it.”

And she does.

–

The third time is one of the softest loves she has ever experienced.

Sonya is all that she wanted and more – brown eyes that remind her of dark chocolate and lips so pink that one would think they’d taste like cotton candy, but the flavor on her tongue is always chapstick.

Sonya looks like she is all leather jacket and sharp edges, but behind the exterior layers, she is the gentlest most tantalizing individual one could meet.

The first time they talk it is in the middle of a class she doesn’t even remember the name to, only that when Sonya first speaks to her, her heart flutters in her throat.

“Hey,” the sound of her voice elicits a shiver down the spine.

Turning to look Sonya in the eye proves to be more difficult than ever. She has to hold her breath.

“Can I look at your book? I forgot mine in my car,” Sonya’s words are accompanied by a smile that makes her eyes water.

“Of course,” shifting the book between the two of them is only a tiny bit awkward – it isn’t Sonya’s fault.

Looking at Sonya like she hung the moon? A specialty. Words so strong and meaningful in the middle of class, she remembers the world tuning out around her as she watches Sonya speak. The way Sonya’s mouth forms around the words of an argument or how her hand moves to emphasize her points – _bewitching_.

At first, their flirting is nothing but passed notes and stolen glances. A smile from one to the other in the early morning hours of class and a few whispered words during a lecture. Careful touches from elbow to pinky finger as they grow accustomed to being in the other’s space.

The flirting turns into dating and gentle kisses in the parking lot of an Olive Garden – not her favorite restaurant, but Sonya has never been and she has a thing for breadsticks.

The way that Sonya giggles when they sneak $5 wine into the dorms made her girlfriend’s eyes water with delight and her cheeks burn love.

Sonya likes to dip her fingers into the lake of her partner’s hair, raking them through its velvet texture. With nimble fingers, she will take the hair between her hands and braid whatever however many strands allowed.

There are kisses against bare shoulders and pulse points. Eyes crinkling at their edges and large smiles that split faces into beautiful art.

Soft, sweaty skin pressing against a mirror image as moans are muffled by lips and hands. She sucks bruises into the tender inner flesh of Sonya’s thigh every chance she gets. The tremble of thighs and the arch of a back are like a drug to her, she wants to know all of the ways to make Sonya come to quickest, but she also wants to drag them out.

She carves the letters of her name into Sonya’s pussy and chuckles when she suddenly finds herself caught like prey in a venus fly trap between Sonya’s thighs.

After pushing her raven hair out of her face, Sonya looks almost angry post-orgasm, or maybe it’s determination. 

“Get up here,” she says, “sit on my face.”

Sonya gives just as good as she gets.

–

Sonya treats her so nicely — so nicely that she wants to feel that itching sensation at the top of her wrist, the telltale sign of a black tally mark. She wants Sonya to be the one that makes it appear so fucking badly that she’s sick with it. It keeps her up at night — memories of the previous two times stampeding over the planes of her mind.

They fight once because of it. A handful of months into their relationship when she is too wrapped up in the anxieties that usually plague her dreams. Their tally marks appear — both as red as the rest of them.

“Stop,” Sonya yells, her voice cracks on the word as she desperately tries to swallow. “Don’t compare me to them.”

It breaks her heart to see Sonya this way, so small and wounded when it was normal for this goddess of a woman to stand tall amongst the rest.

With hands digging into eye sockets, she stands up and presses her forehead into Sonya’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says around a cotton-dry mouth, “You’re not them. I’m sorry and I love you.”

“It’s alright,” Sonya says, arms wrapped tightly around her lover’s waist and a warm press of lips to her temple. “I love you and you love me. That’s all there is to it, really.”

She pulls her head back to look at Sonya, eyes all wet with mascara smudged and she asks, “Really?”

“Really. We love each other, what else do we need?” They kiss once, twice, three times before Sonya speaks again. “Black tally marks are few and far between, love. You’re what I want.”

A memory pops into her head and before she can reel it in, she says it aloud. “Statistically, only 43% of people ever find their black tally mark.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From someone back home,” she grins as she rests her head back on Sonya’s shoulder.

Sonya hums, “Then maybe we can stay together forever.”

–

They’re together for two whole years. All of freshman year and all of sophomore year, but when junior year rolls around and they’re tucked away into their own apartments, Sonya comes over after the first month of school with terror in her eyes.

Sonya, with hands shaking and face pale, stands out on the front porch with a lost look on her face.

“Sonya?”

“I’m so sorry, I-“ Sonya looks down at her arm that she has clenched it tightly against her chest.

Puzzle pieces click inside her mind as she takes in the scene. _Of course_, she thinks and then steps aside to let Sonya into the apartment.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, she watches as Sonya releases the grip around her wrist, revealing the fat black tally mark there. It takes a long time for anything to be said, for courage to be mustered up enough that it is safe to say something.

“Is she pretty?”

Sonya does not answer.

“Come on you can tell me,” she laughs. “I bet she is. I’m sure she’s super sweet too, just perfect for you.”

Her words aren’t hostile, she is surprised by how genuine they come out and by how much she really means it.

“Don’t do that,” Sonya whispers, facial expressions invisible with hair falling over her eyes.

“Do what?”

“Pretend like you’re okay.” Sonya pushes her hair out of her eyes and tries to square her shoulders — _prepares_. “Hit me. Shout at me. Tell me you hate me.”

There is a near inaudible _“please”_ that falls past the lips of her _world_ sitting next to her, but all she can do is smile sadly at her words. It makes Sonya angry – at herself of her girlfriend, it is unsure, but the look in her dark stormy eyes gives her away.

Her own reaction is startling to her subconscious. Blinding sorrow and sickening anger that sits heavy in the pit of her stomach and yells, _“unfair”_ is what she had expected.

But this eerie calmness, the gentle eyes, and a quiet voice? A foreign, and almost unwelcome difference.

“It’s not your fault. Finding your true love is like discovering a needle in a haystack.” She takes Sonya’s face in her hands and thumbs away the tears, but her own eyes begin to well. “It is sudden, unexpected, incredibly lucky, and utterly…magical.”

She kisses her face — once on the forehead, once on each cheek, and then once on the lips.

“I love you,” she mutters, “I love you so much.”

Sonya doesn’t speak, her sobs having made her mute while she shakes in her <strike>past</strike> lover’s arms.

“I want you to be happy,” she speaks against Sonya’s shuddering lips, “so, this is me letting you.”

An hour passes by before Sonya even thinks of leaving the apartment. They lay in bed with their arms wrapped loosely around the other, fingertips dragging down the ridges of spines as they enjoy the end of their familiar intimacy.

“I love you,” Sonya says finally, “I always will.”

“Okay,” she responds, “okay.”

Later, it is much too quiet for her, yet the walls scream memories, so she steps into the shower and lets the scorching heat of the water singe her clammy skin. Her face is turned up to the stream, eyes closed, but still with a smile taped to her face that doesn’t feel like hers.

She repeats what she had said to Sonya as she watched her walk out the door. “Okay,” she breathes, “okay.”

The smile falls off — devolving into a trembling frown, her brow furrows and her body collapses under the pressure.

The wail she lets out echoes in the small bathroom, bouncing itself against the tiles as it is followed by choked sobs that force themselves out of her rattling ribcage.

A groan grinds itself out of her while she tries to breathe around the hiccuping and pain in her throat.

_It hurts — oh god, it _**_hurts, _**is all she can think.

–

The fourth is dumb. Dumb, but thrilling and what she needs after Sonya.

She never meant to fall in love — especially with someone that already has a black tally at the end of their wrist — but it is too hard to not with his head swimming between her thighs.

Professor Seven is her British Romantic Literature teacher senior year. He is a dream in a button-down shirt, pine-honeyed hair styled back, and his beard peppered with white.

To her, his accent is like sex and the way he reads poetry always makes her press her thighs together.

The way he looks at her, eyes heavy-lidded and transfixed on her form while another student read Wordsworth line by aching line, sends a hot jolt straight to her core. 

The two of them will flirt after class or even in the middle of a lecture. Lingering fingertips on biceps, his chest gently pressed against her back when she inquired over a poem. He’d lean in close, lips close to enough to whisper, and drag his fingers over the page she read with his other hand tightly held at her hip.

Careful petting and small caresses were all that passed between the two in the beginning.

During those times, she always felt guilty letting someone else touch her. Letting their seductive touches and suggestive looks be entertained even in the slightest form, but Sonya was no longer hers.

So, she gets used to it - _embraces_ it.

Professor Seven lectures on William Blake’s “_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_,” carefully reading each Plate and verse, analyzing the poets” words and asks the class what they interpret from it.

When he reads the first few lines of Plate 8, he moves away from his podium.

_“The pride of the peacock is the glory of God._

_The lust of the goat is the bounty of God._

_The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.”_

He stands in front of her desk as he reads the final line of the first paragraph.

_“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.” _

His eyes flicker up over his book to meet hers and he watches the way the end of her pen drags against the plush pinkness of her bottom lip. He has to clear his throat when her tongue begins to circle around its tip. He thinks of the way she looks down on her knees in front of him — or more importantly what she looks like with his own tongue curled around her clit, the way her voice trembles around his name, “_Trent_.”

She has him exactly where she wants him.

After class, they wait until each student left, asking their questions and parting with good wishes and the promise to see him next week.

Silently, he locks the door and flicks off the lights. She’s been waiting in her seat patiently for him, and the sight of her there, as ripe as forbidden fruit, makes him grin.

“Good girl,” he mutters with fingers wrapped in her hair.

Within a few seconds, her jean-clad knees press into the carpet and the metallic sound of his belt being removed is nothing if not erotic in the silent classroom. She takes him into her mouth then and gives him the same rhythmic movement of her tongue that had entranced him earlier.

Afterward, when he’s finished twitching in her mouth and he’s panting out the words of his pleasure, he lays her down on the desk and worships her body, repeating the line “_The nakedness of woman is the work of God,_” as he takes off her clothes piece by piece.

–

In bed, he reads poetry too, except this time he kisses down the naked planes of her body as he recites, “_She Walks in Beauty_,” by Lord Byron, a favorite of his.

The poem is sweet, telling of the intangible and unexplainable beauty of the subject of his affections, but the way he fucks into her is anything but.

The rhythm of his thrusts, the sound of her name on his lips, and the echo of skin against skin is poetry in its own right.

She loves it when his hand is around her throat and if he squeezes hard enough she can feel a tingle in her lips. She loves it when his cock lays heavy on her tongue and his brows knit together while he whispers, “_fuck_” into the room. She loves it when her nipple is in his mouth like a lifeline, his beard tickling against her as she twists and grinds her hips down onto him as fast as her quivering pussy allows.

She loves it, but then she loves _him_ too.

When the red tally appears she wanted to cry. She knew this wouldn’t— _couldn’t_ last. The easiness of it all. Her heart too brittle for someone not to knock it back down to pieces.

When she shows him, he pulls her against his chest and says, “This will be the last.”

When they fuck this time it is gentle but rough on the heart. His thrusts were deep and filled with too much purpose. He sits back, pulling her into his lap and dragging her hips back and forth against him. He holds her to him as her body shakes and she falls apart for him for the first time that night.

He fucks her through it, slow and melodic as she wraps her arms tightly around his neck and threads her fingers through his hair.

“Right there,” she huffs.

“Don’t stop,” she pleads.

When she comes for the second time it feels like she’s falling, but he is no longer there to catch her — he lays her back down to rock himself into her faster, chasing his own orgasm.

Then, when he finishes and presses a lingering kiss on her forehead, he stands up to toss away the very thin barrier that was between the two of them and begins to put himself back together — and away.

Watching him slide on his clothes, she recites a poem in her head that had burned itself onto the back of her eyelids the first time he slipped himself inside of her.

_It’s a little Walden_

_She is private in her breathbed_

_as his body takes off and flies,_

_flies straight as an arrow._

_But it’s a bad translation._

_Daylight is nobody’s friend._

_God comes in like a landlord_

_and flashes on his brassy lamp._

_Now she is just so-so._

_He puts his bones back on,_

_turning the clock back an hour._

_She knows flesh, that skin balloon,_

_the inbound limbs, the boards,_

_the roof, the removable roof._

_She is his selection, part-time._

_You know the story too! Look,_

_when it is over he places her,_

_like a phone, back on the hook._

And so, her fourth love, Professor Trent Seven, ended in a flurry of touches, labored breathing, and too many words she wishes were left unsaid.

It was dumb but thrilling, and it hurts her even more.

–

After college she heads back home and keeps her head down; only talking to those whom she is familiar with.

Seth offers her a job at the coffee shop while she tries to remember who she was before Sonya and before she tried to give the remaining pieces of herself to Trent. It’s easy for Seth to recognize the hurt that she’s dealt with — he heard all about Sonya over the phone and again when she came home for holiday break, and he sure as hell knows about the Professor. The bags under her eyes are a little heavier, her smile fragile, and her eyes jaded — she is unlike anything she once was in her high school years.

Seth has never seen her so lost and he doesn’t know what to do.

He suggests therapy.

“Time heals all wounds,” she says to him, a tired smile hanging limply off of her cheeks.

“Bullshit,” he grits. There is a bite in his voice that he has never used on her before and it catches her off-guard. “Time only heals the wounds you tend to.”

It’s after closing and they are the only two on duty. Seth is looking at her on the other side of the shop with what she can only describe as aggravated resolve — he drops his broom, strides over to her and yanks her arm out to display it parallel to his.

“Look at our arms and you tell me that at one point for each one, even the first, that you weren’t happy — even if the happiness was just for a few days or a handful of moments, tell me that you weren’t happy.”

She shakes her head, gazing down at her own marks and then his own. He still has the same amount and he is still with his boyfriend that’s only ever loved him and one other person. She wonders if fate will be cruel to them, too.

Again, she shakes her head. “I was happy at one point.”

“For all of them?”

“Yes.”

Seth lets her go, but then gently lifts her chin so that she will look at him. “Do you remember what you asked me the first time we sat down together?”

Looking into his eyes she thinks back on the time when she was freshly seventeen and only had the one mark on her skin. She remembers being scared of it — a tattoo that told her how she had been a poor judge of character.

“I asked if you regretted any of them.”

“And what did I say?”

“You said _‘No’_.”

Seth presses his hand onto her forearm. “And then, what did you ask me?”

Her sight becomes a little blurry, but she continues on. “‘_Even the painful ones_?’”

He bumps her forehead with his and whispers the same words he did almost half a decade ago, “Especially those.”

Tears are spilling over, eyes too full of all the emotions she forced herself to bottle up for the last few months she’s been back home. It is too much and just enough all at once. Seth’s hands are secured at the base of her neck and between her shoulder blades, refusing to let her go until her cries fall into a soft lull. Her face is now buried into the crook of his neck and she is more than certain that her makeup will have stained his shirt by the end of it.

“I think you should try a little therapy,” Seth suggests it again, hoping that out of the last few years of their friendship that suggesting therapy isn’t a boundary he shouldn’t have crossed.

But, she pulls away sniffing and wiping at her nose with the bottom of her apron — she’ll wash it later — and says that she thinks it’s a good idea.

–

Saying that therapy was a good idea and actually going are two entirely different things.

She goes — because Seth makes her book the appointment in front of him — but she doesn’t know how to go about asking about or for solutions to the things she needs to heal from. She’s waspish and she’s stubborn — a self-sabotaging combination.

She sits in therapy _acting_ like she needs it. Acting like the people she fell in love with were out to tear at the fraying threads of her soul — Seth fucking Rollins included. Acting like the things that happened in each relationship, in each _specific_ instance, were all of their faults and none of her own. She yells, paces the floor of the small, yet oddly cozy office and tells this woman that she doesn’t understand why she’s even there when she knows who’s to blame.

She sits in therapy acting like she needs it because she definitely does.

In their fourth session, after she fleshes out her entire romantic life, the therapist asks her, “How do we forgive?”

“What?” She asks all sharp edges still laced with venom. “Forgive them?”

The therapist’s gentle eyes and soft smile irks her. “No, how do we forgive ourselves?”

“Forgive ourselves, for what?”

“With every story that you have told me, not once have you expressed how you truly felt to the person you fell in love with. In high school, you confronted Corey but held your tongue. With Seth, you never even told him that you fell in love with him.”

“Seth doesn’t-” she exhales sharply, “There was no hope in that one.”

The therapist taps her pen against her notepad before leaning a bit more forward in her chair. “Then what about Sonya?”

She blinks at her and can feel the stone crawling its way up her throat as her eyes sting with tears. “If I’m honest, I don’t know why I…” Her voice trails off and she turns her face away as she begins to bite nervously at her lip. “I should have said _something_.”

“What would you have said?”

Long moments of silence stretch on while she thinks of all of the things she could have said. A hot tear falls without her permission before dashing it away, “I would have asked her to stay.”

“And what about the last one, Professor Seven?”

“Trent was a wild card - someone I wanted to use in order to escape from my mind constantly focusing on Sonya.” She shrugs her shoulders, then looks back up at the doctor. “I wanted to take whatever happiness he had found with his true love and make it mine.”

“Did you want him to be yours?”

“No,” she responds, “but by the end of it, I wanted him to love me too even if it was just a little bit. I don’t know if he did at all, really.”

The doctor nods, “Now that you understand that, I’m going to bring the conversation back to my initial question.” With eyes much too piercing she asked the question once more, “How do we forgive ourselves for these things that we didn’t say until it was too late?”

–

So, she tells Seth about her being in love with him. Says that she is way passed it, but in order to heal she needs to be honest. He kisses her on the cheek with tears in his eyes and _apologizes_ for not noticing. She cries too, much too upset that she even remotely made him feel like he was too kind, too soft, too much of everything for her once teenage self.

“It isn’t your fault, you did nothing wrong.” She hugs him tightly to her chest and tells him she loves him still, but this time for an entirely different reason. “You’re my best friend and you mean the absolute world to me. Thank you for giving me the most magical love of friendship.”

Seth doesn’t stop crying.

–

After two years, she leaves, packs up everything she has, gives her family and Seth the biggest hugs and goodbyes necessary, and then moves states.

At twenty-four she’s in a tiny apartment, working in a bookstore and doesn’t allow herself to fall in love with the woman that asks her out to dinner with the fiery orange hair and wood burned eyes.

She tells Becky — that’s the house fire’s name — that she isn’t looking for anything serious and especially not for anything _not_ serious. She isn’t looking, period. Too scared and still a bit of a tattered husk of the romantic she hoped she’d be.

Becky understands yet still takes her out for dinner, maybe even for some drinks every so often, but she is sure that when Becky starts to show up less and cover her wrist more that it’s because the fire found her kindler.

At twenty-six she goes back to therapy and re-explains her life with less anger than before. Here she starts to open up more, allows the therapist’s questions to roll over her easier than she had with the last. She answers comfortably, knowing that she needs to perform some sort of self-growth miracle in order to allow herself happiness again. She hopes that this is the right time for it.

“How do you feel about falling in love now?” The doctor asks, jotting down things in a notebook.

She ponders for a minute and thinks about what she had with Sonya, and how she wishes she could find something like that again, only this time, permanently.

“I want to fall in love,” she says, “but I want it to last longer than the others.”

The therapist looks down at their own black tally and gives a gentle smile. “Those fall into your lap without you even looking.”

They look blissful.

She wants that.

–

At twenty-nine she’s in a bigger apartment and is now a kindergarten teacher.

It’s her second year teaching and the kids call her Miss Sunshine. She smiles a lot, looks at their little faces and also tries really hard not to cry when they let go of their parents’ hands to run up and give her a hug hello.

They are everything. She has their artwork put up on every bulletin in the room and the ones that are addressed to her are either taped to the sides of her desk or fucking _framed_ in her home. She is completely and utterly smitten by their gap-toothed smiles, large wet eyes, and sticky sweet hands.

It’s almost Thanksgiving and the kids are doodling their hand-traced turkeys and fall colored leaves when a scream erupts from one of the desk quadrants.

Veronica has a colored pencil held tightly in her hand and Garrett is clutching his hand while crying.

It takes a whole five minutes to talk Garrett down from his crying fit, but she sees the tiny wound on the back of his hand from the colored pencil and realizes that she may have to call both of their parents.

“What happened you two?”

Garrett is still sniffling when he points a finger at Veronica and says, “She stabbed me!”

Veronica is quiet but her face is scrunched up in displeasure. “Is that true, Veronica?”

“Yes,” she says, “but he messed up my picture after I asked him to stop!”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“Enough!” She says sternly, and when she looks at Veronica’s hand-traced turkey there is an askew line that looks out of place next to the other careful ones - To Uncle Roman, it says. “Garrett, is Veronica telling the truth?”

He pouts out his bottom lip and nods achingly slow as if he knows it will get him in trouble.

Miss Sunshine tells Garrett that he should listen when others speak, otherwise things like this could happen again, and Veronica is told to tell a teacher before she reacts in anger. It is all dealt with very easily in the end, all it really takes is some rearranging of desks and a couple of apologies.

After cleaning up Garrett’s tiny wound, she secretly wonders what it would be like to stab someone in the hand with a colored pencil if they didn’t listen to her, too.

Instead of calling home, she writes in their weekly planners about the fight just in case Garrett’s parents decide to call the school about the bandaid on his hand.

–

After school the next day, an administrator knocks on her door and peeks their head in. “Hey, hun, are you busy right now? Got a guardian out here wanting to talk to you about Veronica.”

“Oh,” she exclaims, thoroughly surprised that there was any follow-through whatsoever. “Go ahead and send them in!”

The person that walks in is most definitely not Veronica’s mom, but he’s got her latched onto his neck and her little cheek pressed up against his.

He’s tall and much too large for her brain to process anything. He’s all tanned skin and muscle and it makes her nearly swallow her tongue with the way he walks into the room as if he owns it.

She stands up and smiles because she literally cannot stop herself, and the blush rising to her cheeks isn’t helping the matter.

When he looks her in the eyes, his own smile is just as bright. “You must be Miss Sunshine,” he says with his hand outstretched, “I’m Roman, Veronica’s Uncle.”

“Nice to meet you,” when she takes his hand it’s like electricity. This feeling isn’t anything like the others, instead, it burns like she’s accidentally touched a hot stove - branding her skin for a story to tell in the future.

Roman doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are a little too wide and he doesn’t let go of her hand.

“My sister,” he mutters, “my sister wanted to apologize for Veronica’s behavior yesterday.”

Veronica’s eyes stay zeroed in on her teacher. She feels like she’s betraying her student’s trust but is finding a really tough time caring.

“Um, no worries. Garrett’s parents haven’t said anything about it and, Uh, their desks are separated now.”

Roman nods his head and slowly lets go of her hand, sparing a glance at his own wrist now puffy with a black tally mark.

“Miss Sunshine, I-”

She interrupts, “You don’t have to call me that.”

“What should I call you, then?”

_Anything you want._ Is what she definitely does not say.

“My name.” After telling him her name, she chews are her bottom lip and feels the places where the skin is soon to tear but doesn’t give a shit. Her heart is hammering in her chest and she swears that every pore on her is sweating.

“Alright, but I kinda like sunshine, too.”

Veronica is looking back and forth at the exchange like it is completely foreign to her. Her little nose is scrunched up — just like it had been with Garrett — as if it bugs her, and Miss Sunshine just _knows _that she’ll probably have to fight this five-year-old for her Uncle Roman.

_Is this what Sonya felt?_ She wonders.

Maybe it’s inappropriate, but in the pit of her stomach, she knows that if she let this man go without saying anything she’ll regret it.

She grabs a stack of sticky notes and jots down her number before handing it to him. “I-I don’t know if you’re even available, but-”

“Extremely available,” he interjects.

Her eyes light up as he takes the piece of paper and holds it delicately between his fingers.

“Ok,” she sighs happily.

Roman and Veronica give their goodbyes, all the while he is glancing back at her as he walks to the door, still looking a bit dumbfounded.

When the door clicks shut she collapses into her chair and covers her face with her hands.

“What the _fuck_.”

–

Their first date is awkward, but not in an unpleasant way. They both seem to have done this a few too many times for their own liking - introductions, smiles, getting-to-know-you questions, but this time seems a little different.

She tells him about her marks — skims over Corey, goes into heavy detail on Seth, but she stumbles over her love for Sonya and her guilt about Trent — and he listens.

When it comes to Sonya, it is still a bit tough for her to tell their story even though it’s been around eight years now. When she gets to Trent, Roman reaches across their small dinner table and effortlessly takes her hand in his.

He does not judge her.

He does not call her a homewrecker.

He merely looks at her, eyes never leaving hers, and stays present.

When she is done she apologizes. “I’m sorry,” she breathes, a small smile on her face, “didn’t mean to make the dinner so depressing.”

Roman shakes his head and reassures her with a squeeze of his hand. “Don’t apologize for telling me about the life you’ve lived up until now.” He narrows his eyes and grins, “Let me tell you about Jon.”

Jon sounds like a dream and the epic love of Roman’s life. When he talks about Jon, his eyes are soft with the recollection of their time spent together and how Jon’s presence was either all-encompassing or completely unnoticeable. Roman was the calm to Jon’s controlled chaos.

He loved him with a fierce soul-shattering kind of love that could and would transcend time and space. They were together for almost eight years before it all came to an end.

“It’s not too different from your story with Sonya, except I saw him meet his true love right in front of me.”

Gooseflesh pebbles up over her skin at that and she wonders how sick he must have felt in the pit of his stomach, watching Jon find them. She flips their hands over, letting hers wrap around his wrist so that she can smooth her thumb over his own black mark.

“He looked so scared,” Roman mutters, “I remember the way fringe of his hair dangled in front of his wide eyes and how his mouth fell open when he looked at me. We stayed together for maybe another month after that, but he said that there was an empty space inside of his chest now he knew that his true love was actually there.”

She nods, “I’ve heard that it’s like a siren call, echoing inside the empty spaces of your mind and digging a hole into the middle of your chest until you fill it up with them.”  
  
“Sounds terrifying,” He says, eyes heavy as they gaze back at her.

“I’m sure it can be.”

Roman’s fingers tickle the soft flesh of her forearm as he continues on with his story. “After that, I slept around a lot. Woke up in strangers’ beds and pretended that I wasn’t hurting.” He shrugged his shoulders, “Then Veronica was born and my sister needed help after her husband passed. I had to become better, for them.”

As they step out of the restaurant still hand in hand, she turns to look up at him.

“And now,” she asks, “how do you feel now?”

Roman gazes back at her, his eyes gentle. “That maybe we didn’t go through what we did for nothing.”

Pressing up on her tiptoes, she hopes that he knows the vulnerability she is presenting to him isn’t merely an act of comfort, but instead a hopeful step to their own happiness.

He meets her most of the way, tugging their intertwined hands behind his back so that she is flush against him. He curls his free hand behind her back and kisses her softly, cautious touches from plush lips and a sneak peek of a warm tongue weakens her knees.

It is the most tender press of lips she has ever experienced. Her lips tingle afterward, from the rush or prickling of his beard, she’s unsure, but she knows that her head is swimming as they continue to gently paint excitement inside one another’s mouths.

After a bit, Roman pulls back and huffs out a breath. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For finding me,” he says.

–

It only takes a couple more weeks for them to fall in sync with one another. Veronica, who at first was not on board with the idea of Miss Sunshine taking up her Uncle’s attention, is now asking when Miss Sunshine is going to come to visit her with Uncle Roman. She has no problem telling the rest of the class that their teacher is going to be her new Aunt.

Things may be moving a little too quickly in that five-year-old’s head.

Roman invites her over to his place one night. “I’m watching Vee and she keeps asking when you’re going to come over, please save me.” His pleading sounds a little too cute for her to pass on, so she obliges him. “And, maybe pack an overnight bag if you want.”

For a second she wonders if he is using Veronica as an excuse to get her to come over and she laughs.

“Are we having a sleepover for her?”  
  
The gravelly sound of his chuckle makes her eyes fall shut.

“Maybe an adult sleepover, if you’re up for it, baby girl.”

–

He takes a shower after Veronica is picked up by her mom, coming out into the living room in a tank top and sweatpants, his hair being hand dried with a towel. She can almost see the warmth radiating off of his skin and she wonders briefly if she’s allowed to touch before eventually reaching out and hooking her fingers in his.

“Go get a comb, I’ll brush your hair.”

Roman is taken aback for only a second before he comes back out of the bathroom with a wide-toothed comb and plops himself down on the floor right in front of her.

She takes the towel from his hands and drapes it over his broad shoulders, fingernails dragging over his biceps briefly, chuckling when it pulls a shiver from him. With gentle pulls, she drags the comb through his hair. It falls down the middle of his back, its length always a pleasant surprise when she sees him. It’s beautiful and she knows that if what they have becomes permanent, that her fingers will remain embedded in its river flow.

When his hair is thoroughly brushed, careful not to disturb him, she takes the towel away and presses a gentle kiss to his shoulder, relishing at the throaty groan he makes when her lips find his neck. She rakes her fingertips over his chest and down his torso, listening as his breath shudders slightly.

It takes her by surprise when he stands up to stare down at her. Roman’s eyes are heavy-lidded and pupils blown out - in the back of her head she filed away ‘_neck kisses_’ in a sub-folder labeled ‘kinks.’

He holds out his hand, allowing her the chance to turn him down if this was too fast - if all she wanted to do was rile him up the tiniest bit. She was good at that. Good at the playful touches - fingernails dragging down his neck and spine until he let out a sound not fit for a public setting. She always giggled afterward, neither one of them ever taking it farther than a kiss or a warm hand underneath a shirt.

She takes his hand but doesn’t move to get up, instead, she pulls him down to her so that he collapses next to her on the couch. There is a split second where he thinks that this is her way of drawing the boundary for the night and that nothing will move past the teasing touches, but she catches him off guard.

A leg is thrown over his waist and suddenly she is there, beautiful being that she is, pressed against him with her hands settled on his chest as his come to rest on her thighs. The kiss that Roman gives her is enthusiastic and more tongue than not. It is messy, desperate, and everything the two of them need.

Clothes are yanked off in huffs of laughter when feet get stuck in the legs of sweatpants - her back ends up smoothed out on the couch cushions with Roman’s large body draped over her.

Roman sits back and takes the time to admire her. He brushes her hair out of her face, traces the lines of her face, and drags his thumb over her collarbone. When she shivers, he smirks and leans down to licks along the bone. The soft body arches up gently into him and he takes the opportunity to wrap one arm around her back, as he lifts her up towards his mouth, teasing a nipple with a graze of teeth.

“Roman,” she mewls, and he believes that his name is the most magnificent thing that has ever left her lips.

He lifts himself back over her, arm still secured around her back, and he slides into her wet heat. When her mouth falls open in silent ecstasy he swallows it with his own, taking the chance to sink further into her. Against her lips, he is unable to stop his own pleasurable noises from escaping.

“Fuck, baby girl,” he moans.

“You feel too good,” he whines.

_This is different,_ she thinks. _Nothing has ever felt like this._

Roman rocks into her - loves the way she wraps her legs around his waist when he finally gets both of his arms under her to cradle her to him. They both desperately need this closeness, need to feel the other touching every single part of them as if they will wither away without it.

They are face to face, both of them tied up in pleasure with each roll of their hips and punishing thrusts.

When she says his name again, he hears it as a warning, making sure that he delivers her straight to the orgasm she craves, and when she finally falls over herself she is gasping and clutching at his shoulder blades. Roman buries his face into the crook of her shoulder and soothes the area with his tongue before latching on with teeth. Her body jolts against him again as he crushes her to him, hips snapping and pressing further, further, like he can’t get quite deep enough inside her.

He wants to fill her up, paint the insides of her with him and him alone. Knows that this frenzy is partly the true love bond that they share, but also the primal desire in him to keep her forever.

When his hips stutter, she uses the heels of her feet to keep him inside of her. Roman lets out a guttural groan as she does and when he lifts up his head to look at her there are tears in her eyes.

“Keep going,” she begs, eyes nearly rolling into the back of her head when his hands suddenly find themselves at her waist and he’s moving her on his cock the way she needs.

Roman grinds his hips against her pubic mound, slowly pushing her towards a second orgasm. He is close to his own, knows that with the limited room and the still-sure press of her heels against him that she wants what he does, but he needs to hear it.

“Tell me what you want,” He’s out of breath and on the very edge of coming, but he needs this. “Tell me and I’ll give it to you.” _Anything_, he thinks, _everything_.

She stretches her arms to grip his face. “Fill me up,” she whispers. “Give me all of you.”

Roman leans back over her as he grunts and she wraps her arms around his neck when he buries himself inside her, spilling every last drop.

He stays there, both of them exhausted and heaving for breath, but her fingers are gliding over his sweat-slicked back and for a minute he closes his eyes and enjoys the blissful afterglow.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there is a voice that says, _I would collapse my body to fit inside the remaining space of your heart._

–

The next morning they wake up together in his bed, wrapped up in one another as the golden rays of morning peeks in through the curtains. She smoothes down his hair that is frizzing up at the sides and smiles at him fondly.

“Good morning,” she mumbles, fingers still gently touching.

He echoes back the greeting and gives her a kiss right after. He lets her fingers wander over him as they go over the intricate patterns of his tattoos and the scar that they cover.

“I want to tell you something.” His eyes close when her nails scratch over his beard. “When I moved back home after college, my therapist told me that I never expressed how I truly felt to the people I fell in love with.”

Roman opened his eyes at the use of the ‘L’ word, his heart caught in his throat.

“I love you,” he stutters out first and he watches how her face goes from shocked to slight exasperation.

She tugs at his hair and squawks, “You stole my moment!”

He’s laughing now and digging his fingers into his side so that she will join him in it. “Say it then,” he goads, “come on, now!”

“I love you, you big idiot!” Her words fall out in chunks of laughter as he kisses all over her face.

It may feel like too much, too fast but she’s been through too much to care. He is here and he is _hers_ \- black tally mark and all.

“This is what Seth meant, huh?” She pulls back to look at him, smile still on her face, but an eyebrow arched. “That love is magical or some shit - because this, with you, feels right and like we were made to be here.”

She thinks of Corey and of Seth, of Sonya and Trent, of Jon and how their different memories and ways of loving brought the two of them to this moment in time - wrapped up in bed with one another, happy and ready to take on whatever else was to be brought their way. She will work on this relationship, protect it in the palm of her hand and nurture it with all the love she can give. They will water each other, urge the other to grow and become the people they were meant to be - together.

“Yes,” she snickers, “or some shit.”


End file.
